Wickedly Dangerous (Baba Yaga, #1)(112)
“Oh, no,” she said, seaweed-tinted tears flowing faster now. “It’s too late.”
Beka shook her head. “Not yet, it isn’t,” she said, and set off swimming with strong purposeful strokes toward the slowly rising mesh of ropes. “Stay here,” she ordered, tossing the words over her shoulder. Then she swam as if a life depended on it.
As she drew closer to the boat, she could see that it wasn’t as pristine as she’d thought; a blue-black crust of barnacles marred the deep green bottom half where it met the water, and the white paint on top was dull and peeling. For all that, though, the boat itself seemed solid and well constructed—as, alas, did the net that was slowly but relentlessly being pulled in toward its home.
Beka took a deep breath and dove under the water. Thankfully, since she spent so much time in the ocean, she had long ago done magical work that enabled her to keep her eyes open even without protective goggles. Through the gaps between the ropes, she could see the merbaby clearly, swimming in desperate circles round and round the ever-shrinking space. His tiny pale green face was splotched with crying, although any sound he made was lost in the metallic grinding of the winch as it pulled the purse seine in tighter and tighter. As he spotted her, he shot over to her side of the net, making soft eeping noises like a distressed dolphin.
Beka swam up to the choppy surface to gulp another breath, then down again; the trip was noticeably shorter on the way back and she knew she was running out of time. It was tempting to use magic to blast through the net, but she was afraid that she might accidentally hurt the child, and magic often didn’t work well underwater, so in the end, she simply pulled out her knife and sawed away frantically at the tough fibers.
Twice more she had to dart above to take a breath, but after the last time, her efforts paid off; she had a ragged hole not much more than two feet long, but large enough for the small merbaby to exit. The fish within were already bolting toward freedom, brushing her with their tickling fins as they flashed past.
She gestured for the merbaby to come closer, only to realize that while she had been fighting with the robustly woven strands, the child’s tail had become entangled in a section of net, and he was trapped, unable to get loose from the seine’s unrelenting grasp.
Cursing soundlessly, Beka raced to get one more deep lungful of air, then threw herself toward the hole and eeled her way through the impossibly small opening. Frantically, she fought the sinuously twining ropes until the little one was free, and she could shove him through to the other side. Only to find herself trapped in the ever-shrinking net and rapidly running out of time and oxygen.